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| The deeds of heathen deities, and particularly of Zeus.
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§11. The deeds of
heathen deities, and particularly of Zeus.
But of these and such like inventions of
idolatrous madness, Scripture taught us beforehand long ago, when it
said127
, “The devising of idols was the
beginning of fornication, and the invention of them, the corruption of
life. For neither were they from the beginning, neither shall they be
for ever. For the vainglory of men they entered into the world, and
therefore shall they come shortly to an end. For a father afflicted
with untimely mourning when he hath made an image of his child soon
taken away, now honoured him as a god which was then a dead man, and
delivered to those that were under him ceremonies and sacrifices. Thus
in process of time an ungodly custom grown strong was kept as a law.
And graven images were worshipped by the commands of kings. Whom men
could not honour in presence because they dwelt afar off, they took the
counterfeit of his visage from afar, and made an express image of the
king whom they honoured, to the end that by this their forwardness they
might flatter him that was absent as if he were present. Also the
singular diligence of the artificer did help to set forward the
ignorant to more superstition: for he, peradventure, willing to please
one in authority, forced all his skill to make the resemblance of the
best fashion: and so the multitude, allured by the grace of the work,
took him now for a god, which a little before was but honoured as a
man: and this was an occasion to deceive the world, for men serving
either calamity or tyranny, did ascribe unto stones and stocks the
incommunicable Name.” 2. The beginning and devising of the
invention of idols having been, as Scripture witnesses, of such sort,
it is now time to shew thee the refutation of it by proofs derived not
so much from without as from these men’s own opinions about the
idols. For to begin at the lowest point, if one were to take the
actions of them they call gods, one would find that they were not only
no gods, but had been even of men the most contemptible. For what a
thing it is to see the loves and licentious actions of Zeus in the
poets! What a thing to hear of him, on the one hand carrying off
Ganymede and committing stealthy adulteries, on the other in panic and
alarm lest the walls of the Trojans should be destroyed against his
intentions! What a thing to see him in grief at the death of his son
Sarpedon, and wishing to succour him without being able to do so, and,
when plotted against by the other so-called gods, namely, Athena and
Hera and Poseidon, succoured by Thetis, a woman, and by Ægaeon of
the hundred hands, and overcome by pleasures, a slave to women, and for
their sakes running adventures in disguises consisting of brute beasts
and creeping things and birds; and again, in hiding on account of his
father’s designs upon him, or Cronos bound by him, or him again
mutilating his father! Why, is it fitting to regard as a god one who
has perpetrated such deeds, and who stands accused of things which not
even the public laws of the Romans allow those to do who are merely
men?E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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